Progressive Analilia Mejia has pulled off a long-shot win in a special election primary for New Jersey’s 11th congressional district, defeating favorite Tom Malinowski thanks to AIPAC’s intervention in the race.
Malinowski conceded Tuesday morning, saying in a post on X that Mejia “deserves unequivocal praise and credit for running a positive campaign and for inspiring so many voters on Election Day.”
“But the outcome of this race cannot be understood without also taking into account the massive flood of dark money that AIPAC spent on dishonest ads during the last three weeks,” Malinowski’s post said.
I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, it’s even worse than most people realize. AIPAC is catching on to their drop in support and is now funneling their money to politicians through proxy PACs, such as the United Democracy Project (UDP). Also, since unrestricted arms sales to Israel is not a popular position, they didn’t bother attacking Malinowski on that issue. Instead, they put out ads on the topic of him funding ICE, since they knew that would hurt him more.
Good news is that AIPAC has now paid for the focus group polling, and field tested the idea of attacking politicians on the topic of ICE support. This should embolden progressive candidates to attack establishment politicians on this issue.
Here is a longish article on AIPAC and the NJ special election for more details. Also, Ryan Grimm has a great summary in the first third of this video. It looks like Breaking Points covers this election again today, but I haven’t had a chance to watch the new episode yet.
I see.
Hopefully this win and others like Mamdani’s embolden a new push for progressive candidates, especially now when the republican base is weakening, and people are losing patience with establishment Dems.
As long as elections aren’t obstructed by the fascists (that’s a big if), then this is actually a really good opportunity for progressive politics, if it’s seized on. Like, I can’t think of a better time to run on a progressive platform.
Hopefully the tankies don’t succeed at convincing everyone not to vote. They’re as dangerous as maga to the progressive cause.
Be careful with Mamdani. He’s placed a few Israeli supporters in positions. I want to believe he won organically, but you never know. Maybe they were placed there due to political games he was forced to play, but still double take territory.